


Something old, something new

by fid_gin



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 08:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5911837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fid_gin/pseuds/fid_gin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A walker dressed in unusual attire causes Daryl to examine the nature of he and Beth's relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something old, something new

**Author's Note:**

> Canon be damned, I just wanted fluff. It's long after the prison, they're still together, that's all you need to know.

The creature comes shambling out of the forest, snarling through a rotting, mangled jaw, but it's only when Daryl's yanking an arrow out of her forehead that he notices that _this_ walker is wearing a wedding dress - traditional white, with blood-tinged lace still clinging to it here and there like cobwebs.

He turns to Beth, hoping she hasn't noticed, but it's too late - she's standing behind him, knife drawn, staring down in silence at the corpse on the ground.

She's sentimental, Beth is. Things like children and animals, and that couple they found once who'd blown their brains out while holding each other, get to her, and Daryl knows this is going to be no different. Once upon a time he'd have berated her for it, but no more. Not with things how they are now.

So he heads it off: pulls a tattered sheet from their pack and throws it over the bride, then glances back for Beth's approval. She tries to smile at him as the fabric settles over and molds to the form of the nameless woman on the ground.

"Happily ever after," she says glumly, and sheaths her knife before walking away.

***

"Sorry," he says awhile later, as they sit next to a campfire, each picking meat off the bones of their half of a carp and nibbling it from their fingertips.

Beth looks confused. "Why?" she asks in that little-girl-twang of an accent of hers, the one that's nothing like Daryl's own hillbilly growl.

"Sorry you had to see that," he answers, and she shrugs. Goes back to her fish.

"It's just a walker, Daryl," she says in the exact same tone of voice in which she'd once chided him _"But Daryl, you said it was a dog."_ There's something behind her eyes, though...huge and blue, they betray every emotion she ever has no matter what her smile or sass might say, and after all this time he's learned to read them like maps.

Sure enough, only a few minutes later she speaks again: "Do you think she at least actually got married before?"

"Don't know," he answers honestly, not sure what she wants to hear.

Beth pulls a pin bone out of her mouth. "I hope she did. I hope it was the happiest day of her life." She glances up, sheepish. "That's how I always thought it should be."

There it is.

He remembers that night, drinking liquor out of mason jars as she'd listed off her aborted wishes for Maggie, and for her father: a baby for the first and a grandchild and old age for the second. But missing from that equation was Beth's own wishes for _herself_. Had she wanted to get married like Maggie did - an apocalyptic wedding with a gaudy ring plucked from the severed finger of a walker like the one Glenn had given her sister? What about before, when she was just some dumb high school farm girl...did she dream of white dresses and flowers and cans clanking along behind the bumper of a car with JUST MARRIED scrawled in the window, or was it more a daydream of running off in the middle of the night, eloping without her father's blessing? Either way, he guesses the thought meant something to her, and now it's gone along with everything else. Ashes in the wind.

He's still thinking about it later when they fuck by the dying firelight. He goes slow 'cause he senses that's what she needs right now, sits up and pulls her into his lap like she likes. She's normally a little firecracker in the sack - God bless young women who got their sexual instruction from the internet before the world fell apart - but tonight she's subdued, riding him slowly and silently till she comes with a small gasp that he kisses from her lips. "You are," he says breathlessly against her forehead, "an angel." That's what he says at times like these, because the alternative endearment is just a little too real.

She smiles, naked in his arms. "You're beautiful." It's what _she_ says at times like these, for the same reason.

"Stop."

"You _are_."

He waits until he's sure she's asleep before sneaking off, slipping through the strung-up hubcaps around their camp without a sound.

***

The walker is where they left it: less than a mile away, staring up sightlessly under the sheet they covered it with, with milky white eyes. Kneeling down, he cuts the wedding dress off its body, slicing along the seams so that it can be stitched back up later. Beth knows how to sew.

The truth is he was done for the moment Beth held him close and comforted _him_ after her boyfriend had died. So selfless, so pure, so _good_. He feels unworthy in the face of that: some mongrel she takes to bed, permits into her body, but she does anyway because maybe she loves him, yeah that's right _loves_ , the way he loves her. It's so rarely they see something beautiful, and he wants her to have it.

And the dead don't mind.

He lays it out next to her so it's the first thing she sees when those blue eyes open. Scanning the dress and looking to him quizzically, and he shrugs and mumbles "Seemed like a waste of a good dress." The way her face lights up makes it all worth it, and even though he didn't actually ask, when she throws her little arms around his neck and whispers "Yes" into his ear, he knows exactly what question she's answering.

"G'on Greene," he says, waving a hand toward the dress.

Beth holds it up again. "It's all torn." She laughs. "Did you cut this off of a _dead walker_ for me?"

"Well there ain't no department stores, so..."

She slips it on, several sizes too big and dingy and lovely, and keeps it on when they consummate this useless, doomed and perfect union - skirt hitched up around her waist and open seam sliding off her shoulder as he fucks her hard from behind in the sweltering dawn.

As honeymoons go, Daryl thinks, he wouldn't change a thing.


End file.
